public alley 818

public alley 818, Boston, MA, USA

About

this project

From December 2003 to February 2004, I will be creating and performing artworks in public alley 818 [mapquest] in Boston, MA. I will be selecting which artworks to do from a pool of instruction works contributed by users from around the world. I would like your help!

instruction pieces

public alley 818

public alley 818 is in Boston, MA, USA between Symphony Road and Westland Avenue. [mapquest] It is about 1 block (300 meters) long. It has four public entrances and exits. Check out the enactment of "Sonata" for some video footage.

Some things people do in public alley 818:

Park their cars

Put out their trash

Collect cans

Walk somewhere else

Things you might see in public alley 818:

Grates on windows

Cars, Construction Trucks, Dump Trucks

Big rats

Leftover trash

Weeds

Vents

Fences

Fire Escapes

statement

I am interested in invisible things - spaces, frameworks and contexts. This project is a series of performances and installations that intervene into the space of the alley behind my house.

For all intents and purposes, this alley is invisible to most of the people in my area. Unlike the street-facing side of our buildings, we do not decorate the alley, we do not clean it, we do not stroll down it. The alley fades from our collective consciousness, untended and insignificant. If seen or apprehended at all, it is not for itself, but only as a means to an end (say, to empty one's trash).

Invisible spaces are everywhere. They are not just alleys and abandoned buildings. They are assumptions, whole frameworks and contexts, the myriad perceptions discarded, the parts of our environment that we do not see because of expectation.

Invisible spaces are exciting. The rules that apply to the front of the building on my street do not apply in the alley because people cannot see it. They are spaces to be mined for dramatic potentiality and narrative possibility. How can these spaces become active, transformed, transported into a new realm of significance?

The point of these projects is not to make "the invisible visible" (as the oft-repeated theme goes) because it would be boring to thrust a dirty old alley into the forefront of people's attention. It is rather to use what is invisible as a space of radical potentiality and transformation; to bring something entirely new into the world through an unnoticed trapdoor as it were.